Through the past several years of getting to know Akira,
Shinji had learned several things. One, he really wasn't as
cranky as most people seemed to think. Two, it didn't matter how
many times he'd listened to his 'song of the day', there was
always time for one more (which Shinji found kind of annoying,
actually, Kamio's taste in music was a little... odd and most of
the songs he picked as his new song sounded basically exactly the
same, but Shinji was nice enough to just put up with it. Either
that or he just didn't know how to tell Akira to turn off the
damn cd player or change the song or something.) And
finally three, Kamio Akira was afraid of the dark. Deathly afraid
of the dark, so much so that he didn't even like being outside at
dusk alone because he knew he wouldn't be inside before
the sun finally set.

Shinji had made several attempts at helping his friend get
over this particular fear, all of which had failed miserably.
Eventually he just gave up and decided 'Akira was Akira' (much
like 'Shinji was Shinji', because Akira always told him he talked
too much, or that he needed to speak up because he couldn't hear
him, or any number of things. Shinji always thought it was
because Akira's music was too loud that he couldn't hear him.)

He hadn't even really thought about it until he'd been out
shopping - perfect!

"What's this?" Akira asked when he was presented
with a small bag after practice one afternoon.

"Open it." Shinji replied softly. It was a fantastic
idea, really, and he wondered why he hadn't thought of it before.

Akira simply stared at the small black tube of metal in his
hand. "Flashlight?" Who on Earth gave their
friends a flashlight? Completely out of the blue, no less.

"You're always complaining out the dark, and it's really
bright. It even has this kind of cool thing that makes it a laser
pointer. You can annoy your sister or something, or maybe your
mom but your mom's kind of scary so I guess that isn't a good
idea because then she'll start yelling at you -- she's really
loud and I can practically hear her from my house--"

"Shinji, shut up."

"--But at least with that maybe you'll quit with being
scared of something asinine like the dark, it's not like the
boogeymen crawl out from under your bed or anything and it's dark
when you sleep and you're not scared then, so how come you are
when--"

"Shinji. Shut up."

"--You're like my sisters, except you're not eight
anymore so you don't really have any excuse, do you? I mean, it's
not like you were locked in a closet as a small child or your
dad--"

Akira had long since learned that really the only way to get
Shinji to just shut the hell up in most cases was to just grab
him and kiss him.

It worked every time.

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